Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

thedrive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 525 posts

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#421

Post by mschuetz »

tomp wrote: post #411
mschuetz wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed limits are important for non-cars. As a cyclist, I don't want people overtaking me 100km/h with a 1m gap. As a pedestrian trying to cross a small city or town street without dedicated crossing, I don't want drivers to suddenly appear with 100km/h from a small curve. I'd argue that 50km/h in a city is still too much. 30km/h should be the limit.

As a pedestrian, I'm not ok with someone overtaking me at 30km/h with a 0.5m gap. See? It's all discretionary. As should speed limits be (at the discretion of the driver, based on the current road conditions). The problems you mention have other, better, actual solutions (e.g. cycling lanes, speed bumps before road crossings, ...).

In my city, cycling lanes are never going to happen. And even if they were to happen, I would never ever want cars driving 100km/h through cities.

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#422

Post by mschuetz »

cortic wrote: post #418
mschuetz wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed limits are important for non-cars. As a cyclist, I don't want people overtaking me 100km/h with a 1m gap. As a pedestrian trying to cross a small city or town street without dedicated crossing, I don't want drivers to suddenly appear with 100km/h from a small curve. I'd argue that 50km/h in a city is still too much. 30km/h should be the limit.

Have you ever consider that 1m gap is a product of speed limits? If we didn't have such limits, dedicated cycle lanes set apart from roads would become the norm imo. Its not uncommon for cheap inadequate safety measures to supplant real ones.

> Have you ever consider that 1m gap is a product of speed limits?

It's hardly better on rural streets with 100km/h limit and lots of space to overtake. It's not a speed limit issue, it's an issue with car drivers not giving a damn about cyclists and pedestrians because they have no concept of how dangerous this is. Speed limits are essential in a city, and bumps are needed in addition to them.

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#423

Post by leetrout »

hkt wrote: post #403
petercooper wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think so, but people have been prosecuted for warning other drivers about them.

Source?

For the US see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlight_flashing#United_St...

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#424

Post by ta988 »

hkt wrote: post #403
petercooper wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think so, but people have been prosecuted for warning other drivers about them.

Source?

In US it depends on states: https://www.findcarmeets.com/is-flashing-headlights-to-warn-...

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#425

Post by TT3351 »

8ytecoder wrote: post #88
Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there are 38,000 persons killed each year in car accidents -- and yet there are still those who think we do too much enforcement.

Traffic stops in the US are a convenient bypass to the fourth amendment. Split traffic responsibilities from regular cops and people would be willing to be more acceptable of reasonable enforcement.

Whatever employee union that would represent those workers would inevitably start demanding they be issued firearms (at least in the US) due to the legitimate fear of an armed populace, leading to more guns on the streets and more opportunities for deadly violence to break out in a second's notice.

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#426

Post by fudged71 »

ISL wrote: post #17

I once saw speed cameras as "un-sporting" until travelling elsewhere in the world where they are commonplace. In those countries, it seems like everyone just drives the speed limit. If the point of speed enforcement is to, you know, ensure that everyone is going the speed limit or slower, they're awesome. Norway's system of timed speed cameras are particularly wonderful -- they simply photograph a car and then photog…

I am a huge fan of replacing instantaneous speed cameras with average speed cameras.

Our city has the most dangerous road in Canada, speeding is the norm not the exception, and I haven’t seen any debate about average speed cameras

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#427

Post by louthy »

ape4 wrote: post #385
Lio wrote: post #321

There's the old joke: "All those present that object to receiving speeding fines please raise your right foot". People object to speeding fines but receiving them is entirely optional. Personally, I'd rather they clamped down harder on tailgating, poor lane discipline and uninsured drivers than on motorway speed limits.

Tailgating is my biggest hate while driving. The tailgating driver is way over confident that he can stop in time. Its me who will pay the price when he can't. (No I don't drive slowly and do drive in the correct lane when there is a choice.) I hope AVs will fix this.

We don’t need AVs for that. Adaptive Cruise Control with self-breaking cars can do this now; it’s very much how I prefer to drive on a motorway, knowing the car will deal with it if I lose concentration or react late for whatever reason.

Obviously these are optional extras on most cars, but the self braking and auto-distance-keeping could be made a legal requirement well before we see self-driving cars. I’d be all for that.

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#428

Post by easytiger »

scott_w wrote: post #374
easytiger wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dangerous driving lobby. No such thing exists

I was waiting for a response to post this organisation, which definitely has the ear of a number of seemingly influential MPs in this country: https://twitter.com/theabd

How does that support your assertion?

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#429

Post by ta988 »

tomp wrote: post #404
Lio wrote: post #321

There's the old joke: "All those present that object to receiving speeding fines please raise your right foot". People object to speeding fines but receiving them is entirely optional. Personally, I'd rather they clamped down harder on tailgating, poor lane discipline and uninsured drivers than on motorway speed limits.

Speeding is one of the most obvious examples of government overreach. 1) The speed limit obviously an arbitrary choice - the chance of death is decent at 50k/h (standard "town" speed limit in Slovenia) (so why not 40hm/k or 30km/h), and e.g. Germany has no speed limit on the highways (in some places) so there's really no good reason to set a limit of 130km/h (why not 110km/h or 150km/h)? 2) The easiest objection to (…

Putting limits on toxic compound X in food would also be an overreach according to your views. At some point we have curves of accident rate and estimated speeds of accident and a decision is made. For food, we have an estimated exposure (plus other factors such as lab tests on animals etc) plotted against chances to develop a disease later...

Roundabouts are not always a good solution, in US I kept seeing people taking them the wrong way going directly left..

Also what is your proof that cameras don't slow down traffic? Just talking about me it make me more conscious of my speed in the city to avoid getting fined. So I guess I'm the kind of people it is directed at.

Re: New UK police speed gun can read license plates from half a mile away at night

#430

Post by everybodyknows »

swarnie_ wrote: post #354
Lio wrote: post #321

There's the old joke: "All those present that object to receiving speeding fines please raise your right foot". People object to speeding fines but receiving them is entirely optional. Personally, I'd rather they clamped down harder on tailgating, poor lane discipline and uninsured drivers than on motorway speed limits.

Its the "one size fits all" rule which annoys me. My car will comfortably sit at 110mph all day long, if I'm alone on a motorway in the early hours who am i hurting or endangering? It certainly isn't about safety because that same car will stop from 100mph in less distance than the highway code requires for 70.

At 110mph fuel consumption per mile of most cars is ~3x that at 55mph:

http://mpgforspeed.com/

And so is its "carbon footprint" 3x greater.

To answer your question: You're hurting everything that's alive on the planet.

Post reply on HN